The Trouble With Virtual Teams
As technology grows to become more sophisticated, one may assume that collaborating with people around the world becomes a simple and obvious task. On the surface level, with Slack, Facetime, and JIRA, it may seem as though recruiting talent from around the world may be just as beneficial, if not more beneficial for small business owners. Here are a few reasons why small business owners may want to be wary of capitalizing on the advancing technology.
Differences in Culture. Your teammates around the world may be able to understand and excel at the tasks given to them; but providing feedback, having proper meeting etiquette, and having an open dialogue are all very difficult to accomplish properly without knowing the cultures of the workers in different regions of the world. How criticism is dealt drastically differs between cultures, and understanding criticism from other cultures varies based on the culture of the one critiquing.
Studies indicate that trust and workplace efficiency aren’t based upon how smart the workers are, but upon how well the workers trust each other. Trust is built through constant communication and being put into difficult situations with each other. The same study suggested that there was a high correlation between workplaces with encouraged informal talking and workplaces that produced higher work output than the less social counterparts. Unless there is a virtual lounge area where the workers can de-stress and complain about their weekends, trust is much harder to build online.
The last and perhaps most obvious barriers that virtual teams have are being in different time zones. This leads to either several meetings at different points, or one meeting where many workers are groggy from just waking up, or sleepy from just finishing a long day. With small businesses, especially ones that are still pivoting to find their place in the market, having meetings with all relevant workers are extremely important. The differences in perspectives as well as adapting strategies based on what other workers have pitched, is a great way to develop organic new ideas that could greatly benefit a small business.
At this point, it may seem as though virtual teams are doomed to fail, however this is not the case at all. According to Erin Meyers, a leading expert on differences in culture in the workplace, a diverse workplace will almost always outperform a workplace that is dominated by a singular culture. A study was performed where two groups were formed. Group A were all of the high performing specialists, and Group B were just randomly selected out of the thousands of workers. Group B seemed to almost always outperform Group A because Group A would all get stuck at the same point, while Group B was able to take advantage of their differing perspectives and find clever solutions to circumvent their problems.
Perhaps it’s time to go old-fashioned and try to just tinker with your friends in your garage. It worked for Apple, it worked for Paypal, and it could very well work for you. Or if you are up for the challenge, perhaps you could try to tackle on the beast that is a virtual team. My team over at Convrrt is located in Phoenix, and it’s hard for me to imagine a strong company culture if not for the jokes shared around the cooler and drinks shared after a long day. Regardless, hopefully this article will help you avoid the pitfalls of virtual teams if you choose to create one.
Perhaps it’s time to go old-fashioned and try to just tinker with your friends in your garage. It worked for Apple, it worked for Paypal, and it could very well work for you. Or if you are up for the challenge, perhaps you could try to tackle on the beast that is a virtual team. My team over at Altum is located in currently located in San Diego, and it’s hard for me to imagine a strong company culture if not for the jokes shared at lunch and drinks shared after a long day. Regardless, hopefully this article will help you avoid the pitfalls of virtual teams if you choose to create one.
Would love to hear your thoughts on virtual teams! I wrote this piece a long time ago as an article for convrrt but I decided I might as well post it here and see what Steemians thought!